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3 responses on “Brad Williams: Lock it Up”

At 7:50 (timestamp) in this video, we are instructed to create a new administrator ID, log out and log back in as the new administrator user, remove the original ‘admin” ID, and set the new user ID to display a friendly name (firstname lastname).

I did that and noticed that even when logged out and viewing pages as any visitor would, that if I click on the friendly name displayed, I see

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‘mynewusername’

If the new user name can still be viewed on my site by any visitor doesn’t that defeat the whole exercise of removing the ‘admin’ ID in the first place?

I realize that this article is now over 5 years old. With WordPress 4.x, it may not even be as relevant today as it was then. But I do think it is still somewhat relevant at the least and I’ve got a nagging question that I’ve been wrestling with for a long time. I hope you don’t mind me asking it now – despite it being 5 years later.

I’ve heard it said many times by many people that you should delete the default admin account with the username “admin”. But what about leaving the “admin” username there, changing it to a random password, and finally changing the user role to subscriber? That way a hacker can waste time and resources trying to login to the admin account and then ultimately get nothing.

My only concern with this logic is this, if a hacker does get access to a subscriber level account, is there anything he (or she) can do with that? Is there any other reason that the account should just be deleted verses changing the role to subscriber?

Published

January 23, 2010

Learn how to keep your WordPress-powered website secure from hackers and exploits. Brad Williams from WebDevStudios.com shows examples of hacked sites, shares tips and plugins for keeping WordPress secure, and talks about his experiences with WordPress and security.